A Time For Everything

The countdown has begun. Now that my Labor Day road trip has come and gone, it's time to ramp up preparations for my trip to St. Louis...not only for being there, but for not being at home or at work.

The process of publishing six (and more) books gets exponentially more task-riddled as the days go by. I now have a  FIVE-PAGE TO-DO list, because for most of what I have to do, I have to do for six books.

When I became an independently published author back in November of 2017, I did so by publishing directly with major retailers where I could and using two aggregators (virtual distributors for all intents and purposes) for the the ones I couldn't, as well as for the dozen or so smaller retailers.

I had one file for everybody--meaning that purchasing the next book was a two- or three-click process rather than a one-click endeavor. At the time, I just needed to get the books out into the world, and I did that. The rest had to wait for the new year.

Well, it's the new year and it's time to do the nitty gritty grunt work of creating unique files for each book for each retailer so that if you bought your book for the Kindle, the link at the end of the excerpt of the next book is going to take you directly to that book's purchase page in Amazon. Same for iBooks, Kobo, Nook... Well, you get the picture. Six books, six retailers, plus a generic link for miscellaneous use... You can see that it's quite a project.

Back in November, I used an aggregator to get my books into Barnes & Noble because the aggregator offers pre-sales and Barnes & Noble doesn't when publishing directly through them. Fast forward to January, and I want to publish the live books directly so that as much of the royalties go into my pocket as possible. Well, shoot-- I didn't even think that doing so was going to render the original purchase pages/links (through the aggregator) unavailable because Barnes & Noble was going to generate a its own new purchase pages/links. Add a new task to the list: updating all Barnes & Noble links.

I'll have to update links again when I'm able to upload to the Apple Store directly... *sigh*

Of course, once I get all of this figured out and done, it'll be one book at a time and much less daunting.

As I mentioned a post or two ago, I may be called upon to talk about aggregators vs. distributors to my writing group... I think I'll call it "To Aggregate or Not To Aggregate, That Is The Question..." Anyway, I think the specific issue of transitioning books and the hassle it causes needs to be a talking point for sure.

Maybe there's an easier way, maybe I'm making things way more complicated than they should be, but...

I didn't pay much attention to this stuff when it may or may not have been discussed in front of me. It's not fair now for me to constantly beleaguer my friends for information. So I'm plodding through the best I know how, learning as I go. But maybe that's better. I'll certainly remember how to get things done!

On a more exciting note, I get to attend my writers group meeting for the first time in four months. I'm so excited to see my chapter mates and especially my writer besties. I published all my books during that absence, so I get to return as a published author. I get these really cool jumbo pencils, one to celebrate each book. I get charms for writing min 25 pages each month, as well as a charm for completing a book. I can't wait. It's going to be so fun.

Hope your weekend will be as fun as mine--!!

See you Monday.